Starting in 2026, I will officially be dropping the “Institute” from our EMDR Therapy training company The Institute for Creative Mindfulness, at which time the name will formally change to The Creative Mindfulness Network. The new name more genuinely reflects how the EMDR component of the company has taken shape. We are a network of eighteen EMDR Therapy basic/foundational trainers, with a few more folks formally going through the process of mentoring with me as faculty to license our curriculum in the delivery of their training. With the exception of a few trainers who we contract with to provide necessary administrative support for affinity space and other specialty trainings, our faculty are currently running their businesses as entities separate from the Institute for Creative Mindfulness. These EMDRIA-approved trainers license curriculum from The Institute for Creative Mindfulness (ICM), and ICM still maintains a network of highly vetted consultants and consultants-in-training. We tested out this model in 2024 and are moving forward with it, believing that it is the best way to promote our trainer’s autonomy while also keeping a network of community intact.
There is a more significant reason for the coming name change. In my study of and lived experience with toxic systems, I’ve come to realize that institutionalism and institutional loyalty is one of the great problems of our age. Whether that institute is the academy or university, a clinical organization, the church or religious/cultic system, or the governments and monarchies of the planet, placing “the institution” above people is a common denominator in what brings about suffering. I’ve published my struggles with the institutions that I believe have a chokehold on the helping professions in my previous pieces Continuing Miseducation and Not Your Usual Year-End Letter. So while simply taking “Institute” out of the name isn’t an automatic fix, it reflects my commitment, even as a for-profit business owner, to do things differently. And it comports with my belief that language matters.
When I first shifted the name of my training company from Mindful Ohio to The Institute for Creative Mindfulness in 2015, the main impetus for my decision was seeing so many clinical programs do the same. I joked to my colleague Amber Stiles-Bodnar at the time, “If we want a training program that’s more official sounding, we have to call it an institute.” While the word is rather innocuous, simply meaning “to set up” or “to establish,” in recent years I’ve noticed my own stomach wince a bit when I refer to my company and EMDR training work as an institute. There is also the connection that I make to the practice of institutionalizing people in mental health, knowing that while this process is intended to be helpful, it is often harmful. Perhaps I’m still emotionally recovering from steps that I took during the height of the pandemic to make ICM even more centralized and institutional, only to realize that is not the way I want to do business with others. And to recognize that it causes more stress and heartache for everyone involved.
I am grateful for the powerful network of trainers and consultants/CITs who align with my/our approach to EMDR Therapy and have desired to align their training work with me. Someone recently asked me what my business plan was for developing ICM and I answered them honestly… I had none. I responded to a need that students and readers of mine shared with me: they wanted my style of EMDR training. And I am still blown away that so many others out there have desired to share it, albeit with their own flair and lived experience. Like many things in my recovery, I prayed for the knowledge of my Higher Power’s will for my life and the power to carry it out and put the next right foot in front of the other.
We will continue to use the name The Institute for Creative Mindfulness through 2025 officially, although you will start to gradually see some shifts to the Creative Mindfulness Network branding. A big thank you to our technical director Garrett LaValley and his collaborators for helping me/us to redesign the logo. The Creative Mindfulness Network also contains Creative Mindfulness Media, our production and publication company that released Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery (2019), now available in both English and Spanish, Trauma and the 12 Steps: Daily Meditations and Reflections (2020) and the forthcoming Queering EMDR Therapy (September 2025), edited by Roshni Chabra.
One Response
Loving this intention.